


Red

by amandaskankovich



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 17:07:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1718144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Molly Milkovich is Molly Milkovich but not yet and not called that. A universe where the forgotten Milkovich child was not removed by her mother but grew up in the Milkovich house with Mickey, Mandy, no mother, perceived as male and at the mercy of Terry and tries to navigate an identity that feels authentic to her inner world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first in a series of…I don’t know ficlets? I’m not going to call these multi chapters because I am terrible at multi chapters but this is going to be the first in a series of stand alones but all intending to take place in the same au.
> 
> It’s my first attempt at me dipping my toes into a delicate subject matter. Hopefully it’s well received.

Red is just a color.   
It’s a color you’re allowed.   
You wear your brother’s old red hooded sweatshirt (which brother’s? You’re not sure. It’s been all of theirs at some point.)  
Even though it’s May now. It’s over seventy degrees today and sweat drips down your back but you don’t take it off.  
The sun won’t stop shining on you like a spotlight.  
But you won’t take it off.  
Red is just a color and it’s a color you’re allowed.  
You have a knife you took from one of several drawers in your house with knives in them.  
It looks bigger and more menacing than it actually is because your hands are small and it doesn’t matter that you’re ten years old and you’re still growing.  
There’s no excuse for how small your hands are.  
You are growing everyday and you are growing wrong.  
Your hands are too small.  
Your hair is getting too long.  
All winter long you could wear hats all day every day and hope no one would notice and for a while it worked.  
But the weather’s getting warmer now and your father’s home.   
You take the knife and touch the tip of the blade to the tip of a finger and underneath the hooded sweatshirt that you’re allowed to wear, that you only get looks about when you do get them because it’s getting too warm now for that sort of thing.  
Not because it’s not allowed and not for you.  
Underneath the sweatshirt though…you’re starting to understand why you brought the knife.  
"Who’s that for?" He’d asked when you grabbed it.  
"No one yet," You’d said.  
Better safe than sorry, right?  
Today you were afraid.  
The weather’s getting warmer.  
Your father’s home.  
And eventually your hair will be noticed.  
It always is.  
The knife was in case anyone asked you to take your sweatshirt off.  
No not asked.  
Because you could say, “No,” and you could say, “Fuck off.”   
But in your fantasies it’s never just left there.  
It’s for the day when they come and they pin you down.  
And they already know but they want to see anyway.  
You’ll want to say it’s just a shirt but…it’s not really.  
Because if that’s all it was you’d be walking around without something over it.  
"Sometimes," your brothers tell you and your sister tells you too,"you take the smaller beat down to avoid getting killed later on."  
Like you fuck up and you fuck up bad and you know it and everyone in the room does too. Now you could run but only pussies do that.  
And yeah maybe you’ll get away for a little while but you can’t get away forever, right?  
And when the people looking for you finally catch up you have to pay for your fuck up but you also gotta pay for running from it and making people work to find you.  
So you get the shit kicked out of you that much more.  
Your hair’s getting just past your ears now and he hasn’t noticed yet but he will.  
*  
And maybe it’ll be worse than last time when he’d been drinking and came home and one of your uncle’s (you’re not sure which) said something about not remembering that Terry had two daughters.  
So that’s how you end up being pulled half asleep out of bed and not knowing what’s going on and then you’re in a chair in the kitchen and there’s your father and all your uncles and some of your brothers and your mom is who the fuck knows where anymore.  
Maybe she’s o.ded by now?  
Your sister’s at her boyfriend’s.  
And at first it’s just going to be a trim (“Stop fucking crying it’s just a fucking haircut.”) but then no one can find any scissors anywhere and if your sister had been home maybe she would have said,”We’ll just do it on Saturday. The kid has school in the morning it’s past midnight.”  
Maybe she could have talked them down.  
Sometimes she can do that.  
(Sometimes.)  
But your sister wasn’t there.  
So instead someone goes and gets your fathers electric razor.  
And you hear the buzzing and you watch clump after clump of your hair falling to the ground and all around you men are drunk and laughing.  
And you’re not going to cry.  
No.  
No.  
But then…  
There’s something sharp and then it’s not just hair falling on your arm but one drop of blood and then another.  
"Christ Terry you almost took the kid’s fucking ear off!"  
They don’t stop laughing.  
*  
So you had a bandaged ear and no hair for awhile but ears heal and hair grows back.  
Your hair is almost past your ears now.  
You’re wearing your brother’s hoodie.  
Over your sister’s shirt.  
Her shirt that is not yours and that you’re ruining with your sweat.  
You think you wear it because you are scared and it makes you feel safe.  
That’s the truth.  
But that’s not the whole truth.   
Red is just a color: That’s true.  
Hair grows back: That’s true.  
And you don’t know why it matters so much only that it matters so much.  
But you don’t get to have the hair you want or the clothes in the house you live.  
And maybe it is better sometimes to take a small pain now?  
The hood is down. Your hair is in a fisted pony tail.

 

Arya Stark cut off her hair to hide from people who wanted her dead.

 

And you decide to look at it like that.

But afterwards when you walk home you lift the hood over you anyway.

Because it feels colder now.


End file.
